'Mother Teresa came and offered to take childen away, others did too'

Tara Ali Baig, the well-known social worker and the president of the SOS Children's villages, spent some time in Nellie and other parts of Assam recently to obtain a first-hand idea of the problems of rehabilitation and the work that has been done so far. What she observed was encouraging.

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Tara Ali Baig

July 17, 2013

ISSUE DATE: July 31, 1983

UPDATED: June 13, 2014 11:03 IST

It will take many years for the scars of the Assam tragedy to heal. The blood spilled at Nellie and elsewhere still stains the land and the mounds of the mass burial sites serve as stark reminders of the horror. But what of the orphans; the hundreds of infants who watched their parents die before their eyes? For them the future is still uncertain, but there are faint glimmers of hope,

Tara Ali Baig, the well-known social worker and the president of the SOS Children's villages, spent some time in Nellie and other parts of Assam recently to obtain a first-hand idea of the problems of rehabilitation and the work that has been done so far. What she observed was encouraging. Her report:

Fying into Gauhati, the Brahmaputra spills over the land like a jug of coffee overturned on a green floor. The river is an immense, swollen artery in the living flesh of the valley with a capillary spread of grey veins over the wide and shallow landscape. This turbulent river carries down clumps of water hyacinth in its swift current, builds up sudden silt islands they call "chars", and in mid-February this year, human bodies.

Any rise in the river perennially floods the land around. The Assamese build lightly with bamboo-plastered matting and thatch which is easily rebuilt. Floods come and go. The people can cope with floods, but massacres at noon in flashes of savage hostility are another matter altogether.

The Central and state government are trying to put lives back together again now and the Central Government has asked us to set up two children's villages for 500 children, one near Mangaldoi and the other in the Nellie area.

Abdur Rehman in front of the mass grave at Boroburi: Horrific memories

Talking to survivors of the Nellie terror where it seems some 1,400 people were killed, revives this terror. Eyes widen, women clutch at you, a boy's face contorts with the shock of remembrance. He saw both parents cut down in a terrifying slash of "daos" as he hid behind a bundle in their hut. But everyone wants to talk. Men sprawled listlessly on a mat under a tree get up. In minutes a crowd collects.

One man with some bearing of authority said there was steady drumming from early that morning, then the sound of a huge mob. Tribals with bows, arrows and spears, yelling and brandishing "daos" surged on their huts in thousands. Men and women clustered round to add their tales. They were taken by surprise. They could find no place to hide. All remembered the kerosene soaked flares, glistening in the sunlight that sent thatched roofs ablaze.

Tragic Reminders: In Boroburi where all this happened in the middle of February, the villagers are now rebuilding their huts, but close together for greater safety. They have a new thatched mosque and school house. Not far beyond are two huge mounds. A tattered cloth on poles states that 585 people were buried here on that fatal day of February 18. It is the only monument there. Abdur Rehman standing dry-eyed beside it points to where his dead parents lie.

And at the age of eight he is alone in the world. Sakina Khatun falls sobbing into my arms, saying: "Who will get me married? I have no one left." It is clear someone must look after all these adolescent girls too and the young mothers with their babies.

Hamida with her four-month-old baby: Desolate

There is Hamida who looks barely 13, a four-month baby in her arms, whose husband is also under that mound along with Humaira Khatun's husband and so many others. Saida's little hand clutches my pallav turning it round and round. She does not speak. Rabia Bibi, however, is old and articulate. Tears course down the thick runnels of her face as she wails: "All are gone. I have no one, no one, all are gone." The new school house with its dirty floor is now filled with women.

The air, hot and humid, hums with lamentation. The children look on puzzled, big-eyed clinging to the women or standing mutely, hands by their sides. It's at night, when they look for their mothers, that the sobbing will start. A child cannot do without a mother. Assam villagers look after each other, a great strength at a time like this, though now they have so little left to share.

On the surface you see schoolchildren in their various uniforms going or coming from school on the main roads, gay groups of girls in colourful "mekhlas" sauntering along, a man with an umbrella over his head ambling past on an elephant, vendors sitting by the roadside with their mounds of produce. But what has happened to this land? Behind this facade of normality, there is fear in these people's eyes. It is as though they do not know when the next blow will fall.

People talk freely of the paramilitary volunteer corps, the Swachya Seva Bahini with its rigid discipline modelled on the RSS, its network of underground revolutionaries, the bicycle telegraph system, the lorry and bus drivers who are in league, the penetration into every village. But life goes on.

Children of Boroburi: Glimmer of hope

Mother Teresa came and offered to take childen away, others did too. There were so many homeless children from these tragedies, but the camps are already disbanded. People have gone back to their villages taking the children with them.

Helpful Officials: Village tradition in Assam is close-knit and family oriented. Kinship bonds are extremely strong. S.K. Dey, the district social welfare officer, had already prepared a plan for sponsoring orphan and destitute children in their own villages and I suggested doing this on a coupon system with a green card for monthly food rations, a pink one for clothing and a white one for school books! They may have to provide kitchen utensils and tools too as there was so much looting.

The officials of this department had already prepared the names of children from babies to eight years old and all the older girls, and widowed women to train as house mothers for clusters of homes with nine children in each basha.

In Tezpur, Dr Lashmi Goswami, the president of the Tezpur Council for Child Welfare, will take 94 children of the Gohpur tragedy in a similar complex. A very active social worker, Dr Goswami has land and an anganwadi training centre for pre-school village workers, already on that site.

The Assam officials I met were eager to travel with me and find solutions for the children displaced by the February tragedy. Everything was put at my disposal. I was able to meet and discuss details of the children's villages at length with all the district officials, engineers, block development officers and non-officials too who could be of service.

In Gauhati, the chief minister and the social welfare minister were deeply interested in the effort to rehabilitate the children and action has been more than prompt on the part of P.S. Trivedi, the chief administrator, relief.

From their state budget. land is being acquired and temporary shelters put up. In Mangaldoi, J. Khosla, the section development officer, was a man in a hurry. The Dhula inhabitants talked glowingly of his courage, when he went out with the Security Force and repelled a violent mob in the bad days. He wanted to finalise the children's resettlement as soon as possible. On the way to Tezpur, we looked at land, discussed this with the local officials, planned the construction and lay-out of homely bashas, and on my return the next day, rough blueprints were ready and estimates prepared. The engineers promised that constructions would be completed by the middle of July.

All this determination to put things right for the children raises hope. At Nowgong, Mustafaphazur Rahman, an engineer, was apprehensive about the safety of children on the proposed site at Jaggi Road.

Indeed it filled me with some apprehensions too, beautiful as it was with woodlands, rising up to the hills. But children cannot live forever guarded by men with rifles. Tribal villages were all around. It was wiser to move the site beyond Nowgong and land is now being found in the well populated, predominantly Muslim township of Hojai.

Restoring Normalcy: The children we shall take here will all be from the Nellie area where there is still so much fear. But being on the main road, relatives can come by bus to see them. This village will be large, for over 300 children.

At Hojai, the new little township will try to create a new life, workers must be trained a mong the older women who have been widowed by these unhappy events. In Mangaldoi, the children's village will not be so large, and there it might be possible to have a mixed ethnic group, so that in time the tolerance which had been Assam's tradition can be restored.

The Government of India has agreed to fund the permanent structures in these children's villages in Assam and will provide the maintenance costs. Later the greatest need will be to set up workshops.

One of Assam's critical problems has long been lack of higher education and scant employment possibilities. Comparable to terrorism in Bengal before Independence, educated youth become the frustrated material for revolution. Those responsible for these children, coming as they do from simple rural environments, will have to provide basic education and skills that ensure employment.

Assam abounds in coconuts, but there is no cottage industry, as in Kerala, to use the products of this versatile tree. In more modern terms, however, there is need for mechanics and repair skills for everything from pumps to transistors.

Weaving is a traditional art which has so declined, almost all women one saw on the roads, villages and towns, were in mill made garments. Workshops in our children's villages will be able to train children in the neighbourhood too, which will help to create wider kinship bonds in the locality, but for the workshops we will have to seek donations from the public for buildings, equipment and trained staff. With the world-wide sympathy there has been for Assam, this should not be too difficult.

It is heartening to see the rehabilitation that has already taken place and the speed with which the inhabitants and the officials have tried to restore daily life. The underground movement, which runs deep and swift still, like the water of Brahmaputra, will continue to flow through this land and all its villages. Somehow fear must be removed from the eyes of this normally tranquil people, and its gentle life-style restored.

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